Coming up Saturday is a real treat for those of you in Windward Oahu (or those of you who can make it over there) — as part of Windward Mall’s Kids World activities, a bunch of local artists — including Star-Advertiser cartoonists Dave Thorne and Jon J. Murakami and Midweek cartoonist Roy Chang — will gather to create a cartoon art mural through most of the day It’s part of the Cartoonists Across America and the World initiative spearheaded by Phil Yeh, creator of the Winged Tiger comics and stories … and since Phil will be a guest at the Hawaii Entertainment Expo (HEXXP) next week, he’s arriving on Oahu a bit early to help out at this mural as well.

For a proper preview of Saturday’s festivities, though, one needs only to go back to mid-March, when a bunch of artists contributed to a similar project in festivities at Kahala Mall. After the break, you’ll find the pictures I shot at that event.

By the time I arrived at Kahala Mall on March 13, it was close to 3 p.m., and quite a bit of work had been done on the mural already. There was still a ways to go to the final product, though, and several people were hard at work.

That’s Dave Thorne — cartoonist for the Star-Advertiser’s“Thorney’s Zoo” — talking to a girl on the left as several people draw on the right … wait, that woman in pink looks familiar …

And here’s Audra and Dave hugging. (He was one of her instructors back in the day at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.)

Dave’s super-cute cartoon animals were a big part of the mural, of course.

Then there were artists Phil Yeh and Jon J. Murakami. They were there to draw and to sign copies of the book on which they collaborated, Winged Tiger and the Dragons of Hawaii.

Appropriately enough, also part of the mural was Winged Tiger …

… and a Dragon of Hawaii.

Other cartoon creations made cameos as well. (Heck, you could find several in the photo above already.) There was Lebo, the star of Dave Swann’s Star-Advertiser Sunday comic Trouble in Paradise.

There was a Hello Kitty-esque balloon.

And then there was the matter of this hula girl and a caricature of the current governor of our fair state, Neil Abercrombie. It garnered a fair amount of discussion among the artists. I’ll leave it to your imagination to figure out why.

There were a few original creations as well. Like this crow. That’s saying “derp” for some reason. I don’t know … maybe it’s some teen thing I could never comprehend. *shrugs*

But it wasn’t just drawing — there were people working on different elements as well.

After every detail was added, it was time for the artists to pose with their work.

And here’s the finished product.

It looks great when taken in as a whole, but it’s even better when you notice some of the details. Like the notes that the dragon’s playing …

… and some of the titles on the books the characters are reading.

Definitely a fun time for all, both for the people who actually worked on the mural and the people (like me) who saw all these talented artists at work. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for Saturday.